Deep Dive Pod 31 ( Kevin Burt ) International Blues Challenge Champion

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Do you have any favorite stories from the road of what's the what's the weirdest gig you did? Can you can you do that?

SPEAKER_10 0:08

The weirdest gig I did was at this place in kind of mid-northern Iowa. There was this live music room on one side and strip club on the other.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 0:19

And if they liked the band, they had a collapsible wall that they would pull out and you would play for the dancers. However, the dancers were not quality dancers. They were just, they fit what it was supposed to be. They had anatomically all of the parts. Yeah. Right. Did you, would you say, man, I want to see their parts. Right. You know, and it was personal taste. Yeah. Yeah. I did not want us to be very good that night. Right. Shut the wall.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Shut the wall. Shut the wall. Shut the wall. Shut the wall. If you play not to get the girls, and you want to get the girls.

SPEAKER_09 0:59

So that was a trade dick.

SPEAKER_05 1:04

Alright, here we are, boys. Bender Gibson. How's the go going?

SPEAKER_04 1:08

Going well, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:09

Going well, Raymond. There's like seven days out of the 365 days in Iowa where absolutely everything is perfect. And we are like smack dab into the middle of that Goldilocks period right now. The weather's perfect.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

It's perfect. We should be out riding bikes, mowing the lawn, but we're in here podding.

SPEAKER_05 1:29

Podding 72 and sunny. No humidity. There's almost no breeze.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

I mean, it's just so nice. For guys like you, does it get kind of boring? I mean, there's there's nothing happening in the rain gauge. Yeah, yeah. Nothing to check. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:42

It's nothing but bluebird skies, and it's got to make you a little bit waiting for the other shoe to drop in your tornado season will be here soon enough.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Yeah. Then you're fully engaged. Right. So maybe you appreciate this. Give me something to wake up and think about. Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:55

Did you guys have a good weekend?

SPEAKER_04 1:56

Fantastic. Yeah, really good. Spring game yesterday, I guess. Or is it spring practice? What do they call it? It's not as much of a game. You went in, John. I didn't.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

It's a practice. It's not a spring football game, but it's a chance to see the kids running around on pads in the stadium.

SPEAKER_04 2:10

But of course, the Rose Club and Steve Eliason will never, you know, waste a weekend or an opportunity to um gather folks together. So given that there was a Hawkeye event going on, and also him being a very generous soul, he invited us to um have a bit of a tailgate at his place at the Rose Club and also celebrate the graduation of some some kids.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

The dads and grands. Exactly. Yeah, and we have retirees in the group. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 2:39

So plenty of reasons to get together and uh you know eat some good food and have a few beers and some shenanigans. And I think uh thank you, Steve, for for setting that up. And I know Emma, who's gonna graduate soon, and Kelsey. Yep, and Ava. Really uh appreciated that.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

We all three have graduates this year. We do. I mean collectively, we're getting off the hook on some major tuition.

SPEAKER_04 3:01

It's gonna feel like I got more money for bikes and other things.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Yeah, and we gotta give a shout out to Steph, who did a beautiful cake and a nice taste. She was all into it. Somehow she managed to get everybody's name, retirees and grads, all on the cake. So Steve, Brian, Emma, Kelsey, Ava all were squeezed on there. It was great.

SPEAKER_05 3:19

And this just wasn't any old cake. This was a cake, and then there was a layer of chocolate sauce, and then there was a layer of chocolate fluff. Right.

SPEAKER_04 3:27

And then there was a sort of cream stuff, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:30

And then there was more cake. So good. It was a celebration of chocolate.

SPEAKER_03 3:34

And there was also a celebration because the girls, as kind of their grad party, they wanted the dads to participate in a drinking game. Oh yeah. It's popular for them. So we partook in this, and Brad was the big winner. Is it a winner? Yeah, yeah. So I think that's the winner.

SPEAKER_04 3:48

You get the prize in the middle.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

So kind of like a beer pong game where there's little drinks to be had as the game goes on, and then there's what's called a boom cup in the middle that is full of all kinds of and Brad won it. Drink the whole thing while the girls chanted. It was great.

SPEAKER_05 4:02

It was great. One time we were the three of us were standing out in the backyard, and John goes, Oh Jesus. And Elias came by with a bottle of malort. Right. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 4:13

No, we had all the things. We had the Malord. What's it called? Rage Cage?

SPEAKER_03 4:18

Is that the name of the game? Something like that. I do think they called it that. I believe it might have been called Bitch Cup when we they played it in the old days, but they had a new name for it today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:27

Yeah. Yeah. Steve did not let the moment go by. He knew exactly what his mission was. He had it chilled.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

We're prone to do. They made us play their beer game. So once the tailgate was kind of winding down, it was kind of a watershed moment in Iowa City this week. And after a little hiatus, the Deadwood was reopened.

SPEAKER_04 4:43

True. We had to understand that better.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

So we they had some college friends at the tailgate who had not experienced the Deadwood. So we had a chance to take the girls and some of their friends down and show them tang bombs and reintroduce them. So by all accounts. Yeah. We handled their boom cup better than they handled our tang bombs, I think. True.

SPEAKER_05 5:02

Alright, boys. I made a potion for you. Yeah. It's called the uh the the college kids uh Irish Carbom. Yes. Now this is a uh bottle of Guinness. We had the uh draft version, and then we did a Buzz Ball Biggie, which was a chocolate marshmallow type of thing. You do two shots of that into the Guinness, and then um in honor of Cinco de Mayo, I hit mine with a little prairie fire cinnamon shape. Yeah, this one does. Yeah, sure. So it's like a little chocolatey, creamy, cinnamony uh churosi chocolate.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

Porchada type thing going on.

SPEAKER_05 5:43

Right. So what do you think? Is it delicious? It was very fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

Had a little chocolate milkshake vibe going on, or yeah, very good.

SPEAKER_05 5:51

It's not mad. In in the reason that I brought it, Brad, was because it is just two things. It's the buzz ball. Right. It's a recipe I can remember. It's the Guinness and it's the Buzz Bowl. No water.

SPEAKER_04 6:05

No water involved. Nothing crystallized that needs to be mixed in. It's just all ready to go.

SPEAKER_05 6:12

All right. Well, we've got a guest today, so we're gonna get to it. Um Maya Angelo once said, Words mean more than what's set down on paper, but it takes a human voice to infuse them with a deeper meaning. And our guest today has one of those rare, soulful voices, one that doesn't just sing the lyrics, but brings them to life and connects them straight to the heart. He's a true working musician, performing in an incredible 350 to 400 shows a year, something that's remarkable in any profession, let alone the most demanding profession, and he is a musician. He's earned numerous awards. He's played festivals all across the world, both as a solo artist and with his band, The Instigator. His accolades include Best in Festival Entertainer multiple times. He's won the Blues Challenge in the state of Iowa and he's inducted into the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame. One of the most defining moments of his career came at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee, where he competed in a contest of more than 200 blues performers over the course of five days. When it was all said and done, he brought home the Lee Oscar Best Harmonica Player Award, the Cigar Box Guitar Award for Most Promising Young Acoustic Act, and to top it all off, won the competition's highest honor, Best Solo Blues Artist. His voice has been compared to legends as Bill Withers and Aaron Neville. But I'll let you be the judge of it, ladies and gentlemen. Kevin Burt.

SPEAKER_10 7:36

Wow, man. That dude sounds like he's done some stuff.

SPEAKER_05 7:42

Kevin, all right, listen, I usually am really good at remembering stories and details, but I'm gonna try to walk through how I think I met you, and just for this first part, say it might be possible. That can't be possible, or that's not the way I remember it. It doesn't have to be exactly that. But I think the first time I met you was in 1992. Is that possible? That is possible. Okay. Alright. I think I met you in 1992 in the Ped Mall in Iowa City. That's possible. Alright. I think the guy that introduced me was named Curtis. I think it was Curtis Barney, and he played football at Iowa Westland. Yes. And he was a bass player. Yes. Alright. That's possible. So Curtis played in about a dozen bands and he'd introduced me to other people. And when he introduced me to you, he did not say you were a musician. Were you a musician in 92?

SPEAKER_10 8:36

I think I was just getting introduced to the concept of it. I had just moved here. I just gotten out of college myself. And the instigators, I think, formed in like October of 91. So not I mean, I was still in pursuit of a professional football career. Right. You know, I uh had just gotten cut from a team in Canada, the Hamilton Tiger Cats. And uh I was uh I I played I played center and nose guard in college. And so I was an all-American center and I was all conference and all district on both sides of the ball. I Wesley and dude? I Wesley is where I started. I finished at Huron University in South Dakota. Okay. And uh my true senior year, I was a preseason all-American. I'd gotten some letters from some NFL teams saying we see you. Okay. I was built oddly for a short offensive lineman. Yeah. You know, I had the anatomical man, your wingspan is your height. If my wingspan equaled my height, I'd be 6'5. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 9:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 9:37

And so at 5'11, I extend to block somebody and they can't figure out why they can't reach me to get me, to get rid of me. Right. Playing defense, I don't have to be blazing fast. If my hand gets on you, I'm gonna pull you down. Right. And so I used to love when somebody would tell me they were faster than me, because every running back I ever got up off of was faster than me.

SPEAKER_05 10:09

All right, let me finish out this journey here. All right. All right. So I met you in '92. The next time I saw you was in early '94, and you were on top of the magic bus. Is that possible? That is very possible. So the reason I'm telling the story is, and you had like a couple thousand people in the palm of your hand. They were enjoying the moment. The reason I'm telling the story is because you basically went in two years from just kind of dabbling in music to having a huge crowd of people in the palm of your hands. That is absolutely amazing to me. I that is never lost on me. Because everybody I've known that's been in a band had piano lessons, had guitar lessons, had vocal lessons, had, you know, wanted to have a rock and roll band. They had it when they were 14. You did that like in two years. 20 months.

SPEAKER_10 11:02

Music found me. Um, music saved my life. When football's done with you, you can't call football on the phone, just be like, hey, hey, baby, let's let's go get coffee. Let's let's just snuggle tonight. I just I just need somebody to talk to. Football don't care. Football's a we done. There's no pickup football games, you can't pretend to still play football.

SPEAKER_06 11:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 11:23

I I tried playing like in some of the like flag football leagues and everything, but I was too violent. Yeah. And I still wanted to hit people. Right. That was not for me. And so I had always defined myself as that. And I was really, I was I was in the and at that time, I was probably in a the probably one of the darkest places I've ever been in my life. Personally, music saved my life. Who was the person that said, hey, we need a singer? My boss named Ethel Madison, Eric Madison, and uh, he's a drummer around here. Okay, and and went to college or went to high school. He's life life for here in Iowa City. His mother was my boss at one of the jobs that I had when I moved here. And uh she heard me singing in an office one day while I was doing some paperwork. I was singing to a Luther Vandross album. You know, and she stuck her head, damn boy, you sing. I was like, whatever. Yeah, what whatever. She's like, No, my son is putting together a blues band. You need to come audition. Oh, wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

And you had not done any music, band, or anything growing up.

SPEAKER_10 12:24

I did not think I could sing.

SPEAKER_03 12:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 12:26

Period. I just I didn't sound like Teddy Pendergrass. I didn't sound like Luther Vandross to me. Yeah. I and so no, it just was not on my list.

SPEAKER_05 12:35

For people that know you, that have seen you and heard you, this this is gonna be amazing because in such a short amount of time you went from being a an amazing singer, somewhere along the line you picked up a guitar, became a really good guitar player, and won the Oscar Blues Harmonica.

SPEAKER_10 12:54

I mean, it's I picked up the guitar and a harmonica the same day. Okay, yeah. Yeah, and so anytime you try and learn a language outside of your outside of your comfort zone, yeah. And music's a language, yeah. I mean, it's just you're using a tool to to to say it, but there's a definite, there's a written pattern to everything. And if you know, if you can hear it, a lot of times you can find it. At least that's how my head works. Yeah. And plus, I'd watched other people play, and there's nothing special about them. Right. It's I've seen some idiots pick up a guitar and make it sound like heaven. And they're absolute idiots. Right. You know, and if they can do it, it can be done. And so I hard-headed athlete. If I do this, if I if I ran this play, if we ran it one time and I sucked, I better not ever let that happen again. Right. That's athlete mentality. If I play this song and it sucks, it won't next time. Yeah, you figure out how to do it.

SPEAKER_05 13:56

Well, I I I appreciate you going through that exercise. I've known you for a long time. I wouldn't say you know, you and I've went out and had dinner or anything like that, but I've known you for a long time. And we have some roots in different areas. Um, but it just absolutely amazes me. From when I was introduced to you, and you're a cool dude, man. You were really super nice to me, to the time I saw you up on top of the magic bus, I was like, what the hell happened? Like, it was like m rock and roll dust sprinkled on your head. You were not necessarily the same dude. You were quiet and reserved when I met you, and when you're on top of the bus, you were a rock star.

SPEAKER_10 14:34

I had to I had to create a persona. Yeah. Because I am I'm a homebody, I'm a I'm a quiet and reserved person. I you just can't be entertaining and be that. Right. Can't be on all the time. No. And so for the folks in Iowa, they met on stage a guy that went by the name of Kevin B. F. I remember that. I remember the BF. All right. Not everybody understood what the BF stood for. But I got the nickname, had nothing to do with music. My brother Kerry uh played strong safety at the University of Iowa back in the day. Yeah. When he first got here, he was just recruited as an athlete. He carried was Mr. Everything in the state of Iowa for the year that he graduated.

SPEAKER_05 15:22

For those that don't know Iowa football, being recruited as an athlete is a high honor. Super high honor. It means there's no ceiling on you. We got a lot we can do with you.

SPEAKER_10 15:30

Put it this way, in one game, when Kerry in high school, he played, they were playing against Mason City. In that one game, Kerry accounted for 1,044 yards. Wow. In one game. Yeah. Between his the his punt returns, kick returns, receiving, rushing, passing, and punts. He accounted for over a thousand yards in one game. That's insane.

SPEAKER_04 16:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 16:00

And I was like, who does that? And it it was ridiculous. When people talk about video game stuff, Kerry did that.

SPEAKER_05 16:08

Where did you go to high school?

SPEAKER_10 16:09

Waterloo West.

SPEAKER_05 16:10

When you go to that field today, have you been back to the field in a while?

SPEAKER_10 16:13

Oh, they're getting ready to change everything.

SPEAKER_05 16:15

Yeah, they're gonna merge it. But when you go to that field, they have posters of everybody that went to the pros from West and to college. And it is amazing. The people that came out of that program in the 80s is absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_10 16:30

Yeah, man. You know, and so I said, I you know, I I never made a roster, but I got my opportunity. And uh I grew up in the shadow of two, like my eldest brother Sean. Sean had like a 48-inch vertical leap. And so this dude, he was 6'1. Wow. And he had he's the only person that has a wingspan longer than mine that I know, and he was only 6'1, but he's the only person he could walk behind me and reach around me and like bear hug me over my shoulders. Yeah. Other people have tried to surprise me like that, and their hands stop about you know, yeah. And so I'm I'm I'm a wide dude, man. And and so like Sean, there's a picture of him when he was in high school at the state tournament, and a ball had bounced off the back of the rim, and uh the photographer from the the gazette or the register took the picture through the backboard. And what you see is like the rim and a bunch of hands about rim height, and then you see my brother Sean catching a basketball and looking down into the rim about to dunk off of a rebound. And let me tell you, I was at that game, and when he threw it down and went, it was so loud that it sounded like silence. Yeah, it was amazing. It just was the the place erupted. Yeah, yeah. Nah, Sean, Sean was the most athletic in our family out of the fellas. Carrie was the most coachable. Okay, and I just didn't look like I was supposed to be able to do a damn thing because I was the short fat one. So but I could dunk a basketball.

SPEAKER_05 18:15

When I met you, you're in pretty good shape.

SPEAKER_10 18:17

You know, I I was I was a monster, and this is messed up. So do you get your BF nickname in college? Okay, so I was gonna get to BF. Yeah. Carrie, his roommate was Kevin Harmon. Yeah. Okay. So I I walk into his room first day I go to visit Carrie in college, and Ronnie Harmon and Kevin Harmon are standing in the room. Yeah. And he goes, Hey guys, I want you to meet my little brother. And they both look at me. And they look at him, they look back at me, and look back at him, and in stereo go, this big fucker's your little brother. And it'd have been cool if it would have stopped right there. Now I'm a freshman in high school, mind you. It would have been cool if it had stopped right there, but it went all the way to Hayden Fry. That was the response from everybody, including Hayden Fry. This big fucker's your little brother. And so I became affectionately known to the entire sporting, everything. Basketball players. Anytime I'd come to visit care, hey big fucker, let's go do this. Hey, big fucker, big fucker, big fuck. I was not his little brother. And so, fast forward, I get done with college, I end up moving here, I end up getting cut. I'm I'm I end up singing. One of my first shows happened to be at the Vine the night of the spring game.

SPEAKER_04 19:31

Okay. So you just had that yesterday.

SPEAKER_10 19:34

Alumni all over the place, man. And these brothers come in and women's basketball players, all and I'm singing a song. And at that time, I would wear my hat down as close to my eyes as I could, and I'd set the microphone just under my chin, and I'd put my head down and I'd sing the song, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing. Next song, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing, sing. And and and that was the personality that was on stage. And I held my pant leg because I didn't know what to do with my hands. Yeah. After the first song that we did that night, I look up and the back of the room looks like an all-star poster. So that song, big fucker. Right. And they're screaming this. And the band is like, who they mad at? Why are they mad at you? I'm like, nah, they love me. That's those are those those are my people. And so the problem is, is I do a lot of work in the community. You can't be a big fucker working with people's kids. Right. Right. So BF was born. And if you knew what BF stood for, you knew. You knew. But if you didn't, it was just BF. I could be your best friend. I could be big and fuzzy. I could be, you know.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

Fill it up with whatever you want. You fill in the blank.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

Now, if you hear that these days at a gig, you know they're the OG fans of yours.

SPEAKER_10 20:45

So I I don't run away from it, but I don't use it. I don't have to use it because Kevin Burt is enough. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 20:53

Let me throw some flowers at you, man. Do you ever think about how many nonprofits you have helped that have nonprofits have started like in P.O. boxes or just like in the conference rooms of libraries, you know, six people sitting around wanting to help the community. They came up to you and said, Hey, could you do 30 minutes to try to get people to come to our first event? How many organizations has that been?

SPEAKER_10 21:18

I've seen you I I every to this day, I try to make time for everyone that asks. Because the things that make a community cool and unique are how we treat each other. And most nonprofits are trying to fix a problem that a community has. And if it's a problem for the community, let's address it. Let's not run away from it. What can we do to help? And you know, if if I can draw enough people to turn their heads and go, okay, Kevin Burke's playing, but what's this? Yeah. And they at least get the information, they can make a decision at that point. And so yeah, I I count on this community, I've counted on this community to support. Me and doing what I do. Shame on me if I don't support this community back. Dude, I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 22:07

I think this is a good musician community. I mean, the people that are around here are pretty good. But there's nobody I don't think that's even close to what you have done for nonprofits and helping this community, man. You are like the number one face of the Mount Rushmore of helping nonprofits around here. And I I thank you a thousand times for making this place a better place. I see it, man.

SPEAKER_10 22:27

You know, I I know what it feels like to like folks don't know. Like my first handful of months in this community, I was homeless. I moved from South Dakota. Me and friends rented a house for$175. Three-bedroom house. Okay. Utilities paid.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 22:44

And so that's what I thought rent was.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 22:48

We split it three ways. I was just like, I I ain't too bad. I can do that on my own if I get a job. You know, man, I moved here. Yeah, it's gonna be the cheapest place I could find. Well,$400. Yeah. First month, last month, and security deposit. So I needed to pay$1,200. I had five jobs. Yeah. Didn't none of them pay me for the first four weeks. So for the first month that I was here, I lived in my car. Wow. Little orange pinto.

SPEAKER_04 23:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 23:22

And luckily I had a job that I had keys to. So I'd leave for most of the day after work and then come back at like two in the morning. Get a couple hours of sleep, sleep at the window to face the east. When the sun came up, I'd get up, I'd clean up any mess, vacuum the floor, put all the chairs back, go to the field house, because it was free to go to the field house. I'd work out, take a shower, shower up, show back up to work. And I got away with that for the first month so that I could make enough money to be able to afford to move into a place here. So not everybody's situation is a choice. Sometimes it is what it is because of the sit because of the moment. And I was too embarrassed to ask for help. I'm sure somebody would have said, yeah, man, let me, you know, I'll loan you the money. I was too embarrassed.

SPEAKER_05 24:12

Yeah. You know? I'm sure any musician out there that hears 250 dates, 300 isn't surprised gigs. Yeah, they know who you are. But there have been times in the summer where I have seen you out in front of Ginsburg's at 11 to 1. And then we, it's like on a Friday, then we go up to watch the Colonels, we'll stop into Checkers, grab a quick beer, a little something to eat before we go to the Colonel's game. Happy hour. And then after the Colonel's game, we'll go out to Club 76. You're there. You're there at Ginsburg's. You're there at Checkers. You're there at Club 76. And I don't, has that ever that's never left you, has it? That work ethic, that hustle? No.

SPEAKER_10 24:55

I mean, my family says it's cool for me to do this. You know, if if I don't produce, it ain't cool for me to do this. Right. I mean, at the end of the day, it's not so that you can do everything that you want, but if I can't make the world a better place for my kids, if I can't make sure that they don't have my experiences growing up, they don't experience poor at the level that I knew poor to be. Right. You know, then I didn't I I'm not doing better. And I've never been afraid to work. Right. You know, but I I'm doing something I love. Right. And work ain't that hard when you love what you do.

SPEAKER_05 25:32

Brad, um, before we pressed record here, Brad said that uh he saw you officiate a wedding one time and actually gig, and your daughters also played with you. Yeah, yeah. So you've been a good example to them. Like work hard and do what you love, and success will find you. Happiness will find you.

SPEAKER_10 25:53

Well, you know, you know, happiness is that's the one thing that's always worth pursuing, in my opinion. You know, I did a show, I did an opening show for a fellow named David Honey Boy Edwards. David Honey Boy Edwards was one of the last people on the planet to see Robert Johnson alive. Oh wow. Okay, yeah. And so Mr. Edwards, he was only 14 years old at the time. When I met him, he was 87, and he was still playing 125 dates a year. Wow. Yeah. And I opened for him at the wheel room, and it was really, really early in my solo career. And so not a lot of people had seen me play, heard me play solo. And I got done with my little 30-minute set, crickets. Not boos, not applause, just people staring at me. Silence. I said, Thank you. And I went to walk off the stage. And Mr. Edwards, we're at the wheel room. So I'm walking off the stage, stood right at the bottom of the steps, right in the middle, and he waited for me to look him in the eye. And he smiled and he said, Boy, if you play for applause, that's all you're gonna ever get. You did just fine.

SPEAKER_05 27:08

Yeah. That's gotta feel good coming from so many respect.

SPEAKER_10 27:12

Well, it took a minute for me to process. I just said thank you. And I smiled and I walked past him, and I sat down, I thought about what he had just said to me. You made comments earlier, you know, hey, you know, we don't we don't get as many girls. But if you play music to get girls, you do that. You do that. If you play to get free drinks, get as free as many free drinks as you want. If you play for applause, you're gonna hear something. But what are you really doing this for? What's your why? And if your why is bigger than that, and it better be, you'll get there. It's not a quick trip, it's not a it's not an overnight thing, but you'll get there. You have to, you have to just keep doing it for that reason. That has to be your why always. And so my why is always, you know, make sure my family's good. Make sure that I get to do some of the things that I want to do. You know, that I get invited to go to places I can't afford to get to. And when I get there, they pay me to be there. That's cool as hell. I get to go to the Netherlands in a few weeks.

SPEAKER_04 28:22

Awesome.

SPEAKER_10 28:23

I get to go later this summer, I get to go to Romania. Okay I was never that was things to do. Yeah. But they they're gonna pay me really well to come to Romania and perform. That's fabulous. For 150,000 people. I'm good with that. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:41

You know, you know, so you you talked about learning how to play guitar and harmonica is kind of learning a foreign language, um, and I can totally understand that analogy. But the thing that amazes me most about you, that there's hundreds of thousands of musicians that can't do this that you've done, is you also write your own music. Oh, yeah. So you can kind of figure out mathematically how chords go together and how things are supposed to go in your ear.

SPEAKER_10 29:10

Making it way more complicated. But way more complicated.

SPEAKER_05 29:14

Lyrics are tough, man.

SPEAKER_10 29:15

No, they're stories, man. They're really not. Let's do this. Alright. Okay. Alright.

SPEAKER_05 29:20

Love it.

SPEAKER_10 29:21

Right here, right now. So Kevin's getting out his guitar. You you you tell me the ingredients for the concoction that we're drinking.

SPEAKER_05 29:28

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_10 29:29

Tell me the ingredients.

SPEAKER_05 29:30

Alright, so we got Guinness from Ireland, and we got a Biggie's buzzball from God knows where. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:39

I don't know if we want to know where that's from.

SPEAKER_05 29:42

But it's kind of like a little uh high octane chocolate liqueur. So yeah. So yeah, Guinness chocolate Guinness. Chocolate and Ireland.

SPEAKER_04 29:49

Biggie's buzzball, yeah. Ireland. Chocolate, cream.

SPEAKER_05 29:52

Yeah. So Kevin is tuning up his, he's got a steel guitar, resonator guitar.

SPEAKER_10 29:59

This was the guitar that I played at the International Blues Challenge.

SPEAKER_05 30:02

Yeah. So he's great. Sounds he's tuning it up. We're ready.

SPEAKER_10 30:07

Alright, so you take a moment and you take what you see, and then you find something that pulls it together. So sitting around talking to my friends, yeah. Cause somebody made the call. I just sit around talking to with my friends. Cause somebody, somebody made the call. Sit down and relax. Poor the little Guinness. And something from a biggie ball. Tastes like a cafe mocha. But it kind of makes me smile. And I'ma figure out why they call it a buzz ball. I'm just a little sitting around talking. Just me and my friend. Oh, that's when a good time, the good time began. Let's let's get together with these friends of mine. Problem is, problem is. If we get we get together, we always run out of time. Oh, but it's always a good time, baby. Come on, come on. It's just that this time is the first time, not the last time. And we had ourselves a Guinness Santa Diggie Ball.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

Yeah, it is phenomenal. You're right, it's not that hard. It's not, man.

SPEAKER_10 32:56

It's it's you know, it's it's it's it's the story, and and a couple of words have to rhyme every once in a while. Right. And once you get comfortable with it, your head moves, yeah. You you you you think ahead of yourself, you know, and I always tell folks it's my party treat. Yeah, yeah, you know. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 33:15

Kevin, I heard you say once in an interview that uh you find it important to use silence and space in your music to tell your story. I thought that was interesting. Can you explain a little bit about what that means and and how you incorporate that?

SPEAKER_10 33:32

See how that created tension just then?

SPEAKER_03 33:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 33:38

You know, it's it is it's a thing. A conversation isn't constant. Yeah. It's not constant sound.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Some dramatic pause or absolutely.

SPEAKER_10 33:47

That's how we convey emotion sometimes. Sometimes you get so mad you can't say a word. Yeah. Sometimes, and and if you can build the music and you can create the the moments, that silence is the best lyric. That silence is the best lick. And it's not that it's um, it just needed to be there. And there's not a lot of folks that are patient enough to allow that thoughtfulness of that.

SPEAKER_07 34:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 34:15

You know, that's one of the reasons like sometimes when we when we read poetry, it's best to have the author of the poem read it. Yeah. Because they know where they intended the words to land. When you read it, you go, oh, that's nice. But when they read it, you go, ooh, I get it. That's cool. And so to me, that's how music should always be, especially blues, because it's so emotional. It's it's that, you know, it's that thing that it's kind of like, okay, the song in the air tonight.

SPEAKER_04 34:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 34:49

So soft, so soft, so soft, so soft. And then that little dramatic pause and that drum, man, and that gives everybody goosebumps. Right. You know, and so in in those moments, man, I mean, you you you realize the power of not only what it is that you're saying, but the sounds that are a part of what you're saying.

SPEAKER_05 35:13

Yeah. Cool. There's a lot of like the scariest scary movies don't show you the scary, they let you imagine what the scary is. Because whatever they're gonna show you, it's not as scary as where your mind goes to, whatever's scary for you. Um, and I'm sure when you play in front of like super educated blues and you leave out a note or chord, they automatically connect it. They're like, I know he wanted to play that, and he left that for me to be part of this experience.

SPEAKER_10 35:40

I do that with a lot of other people's songs. Like, they played it right. I ain't them. Yeah, I never have to play it right. You know, you take a song like um this one. All right, there's no harmonica in this song. There's no harmonica in this song, but there's a bass line that's not gonna be here.

SPEAKER_08 36:00

But as I play the song, I know it sounds funny, but I just can't stand the pain.

SPEAKER_10 36:24

Girl, I'm leaving you tomorrow. Seem to me, girl, you know I've done all I can. You see a see a big stuff and I'm about sunny morning. I'm easy, yes, I am easy like Sunday morning. Yeah, so nice. Alright, so that bass line, that fill right there, boom. That fill played in your head and it wasn't going to exist. The silence allowed you to imagine it. You're familiar with the song, and that's it. I use when I'm playing solo shows, I use silence as the backing band. That's my backing track, because it's in your head, and it makes my world it makes me better than I than I am.

SPEAKER_05 37:43

Kevin, I w I want to tell you, my youngest, who's uh 18 now, when he was nine years old, you very graciously gave him your book and harmonica on how to play harmonica. You Kevin has a book, it's out. But you can get through Kevin's website too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 38:01

Yeah, it's uh it's called Just Play It. West Music Company is the they would have published it.

SPEAKER_05 38:05

And so my 18-year-old runs around and tells everybody that you taught him how to play harmonica. So this um this leads me into this. You are an ambassador for the blues. Um, Iowa, a lot of people don't believe this, but at one time Iowa had more blues societies than the state of Texas. And it started out here. You going into the schools, you spreading the good word of the blues, letting the kids of Iowa know that there is blues history here, and now you're you've taken that out into the United States. Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_10 38:40

You know, it's it's it's wonderful. I I always call it I I get to have the Scooby-Doo moment over and over again. You know, I'm blues singer from Iowa, is to decide, oh and they always say it the same way. It always comes out sounding like Scooby-Doo. You know. And a lot of people imagine that it's all the potatoes, right? No, no. You know, and uh so it's it's a thing. Nobody knows who we are, where is where this place is. But honestly, the the most beautiful thing is I'm halfway to everywhere as a touring artist. Being in the middle, I can I can do things that if I lived on one coast or the other, or top or bottom, it's hard to do this. In four hours, I'm in major market cities. But the gold mine is all those places that everybody else forgets to play in between those major cities. And when I figured that out, man, man, it made it made working make sense. This is the this is the simple math of a musician. One hundred times a year, I gotta get 50 people in a room that are willing to hand me$20. Right.

SPEAKER_04 39:51

Well, I I was gonna ask Ray, like I'm sure Kevin, you know that like we started this pod with the name Deep Dive, and so it's a little bit about Midwestern dive bar culture. And like given your profession and like you've played all over the place, you're gonna go to Romania, you're gonna go to the Netherlands. Do you have any favorite stories from the road of awesome venues you've been to or crazy? Like, what's the what's the weirdest gig you did? Can you can you know? Weirdest gig.

SPEAKER_10 40:22

The weirdest gig I did, honestly, was at this place in kind of mid-northern Iowa. Okay. Up near a very popular lake-ish area. I won't say the name, right? Because a lot of folks go there. One of three. Yeah. All right, all right. But we there was this live music room on one side and a strip club on the other.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 40:47

All right. So and if they liked the band, they had a collapsible wall that they would pull out and you would play for the dancers. All right. However, the dancers were not quality dancers. They were just, they fit what it was supposed to be. Okay. They had anatomically all of the parts. Yeah. Right. Did you, would you say, man, I want to see their parts. Right. You know, and it was personal taste. Yeah. Yeah. I did not want us to be very good that night. Right. Shut the wall. Shut the ball. Shut the ball. Shut the wall.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Shut the ball. If you play not to get the girls, and you want to get the girls.

SPEAKER_10 41:32

So that was that was a strange gig. That was a strange gig because it was it was let's make this not have a flow. That's all it was. Because if we played song after song after song after song, and the crowd got into it. And so that was one that I made sure that I did a lot of talking between songs.

SPEAKER_03 41:51

Now, did you know the curtain was going to open beforehand? Was that a surprise? Two-bit set?

SPEAKER_10 41:54

I was told that if you know if the dances, you know, because they staggered the sets. And so it was just, it was literally like the last two sets. Like they played, you play short sets. Because they wanted you to go between the two bars. They wanted you to go from room to room. Yep. Give the girls a break. And uh Yeah. I didn't I didn't want to play that game. I didn't want to be a part of their show.

SPEAKER_03 42:19

Well, this leads to kind of a question I was going to ask you. I asked Dave Zolo this. I called it my Blues Brothers-inspired question. I'm sure at some point in your uh journey you've found yourself in a venue for a gig and you felt the audience was there for some different genre of music or something than what you had planned to play. And so my question is if or when that's happened, do you just stick to your your jam and play what you're gonna play, or do you will you humor the crowd and give them a little rah hide or a free bird if they need it, or is you just give what you give them?

SPEAKER_10 42:45

I always tell folks I only know one version of Free Bird, and it's in sign language and it's really short. That's right. I think that's about what Zolo said. Sometimes I do it for you twice. You know, it never costs you a dime. And I've been doing that for years, man. And you know, bottom line for me is you know, you came for good music. Yep. That's my hope. And so, yeah, you might not dig. I get told more times than I don't. I'm not a big blues fan, but I like what you do. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, that just means, you know, you haven't ventured into my part of the buffet before. Sure. You know, anybody can walk up to a buffet at a at a at a and and go, man, I don't like any of the stuff that's on here. If they walk to the salad bar, yeah. Man, all this stuff, oh man, I ain't eating on any of this stuff. But if you venture down the salad bar, then you show up to the sides and you show up to the main cores and the proteins and all that. But if you just sat at that one spot, no, you're not gonna see anything you like. Yeah. And let's say you find a few things that you think you might like, and it's not, you know, all that. You know, you get I went and got some broccoli, and I didn't wasn't sure about it. But then if I go down a little farther, there's cheese sauce. And I put that cheese sauce on the broccoli. Oh my god, that's magical. Stuff. And so bottom line is there's all kinds of different things to try. Blues is not just one shape, one form, one presentation. However, if somebody tells you this is the blues and you believe them and you have a horrible experience, that's what the blues is to you. It's a horrible experience. And and that's not what the blues is ever.

SPEAKER_03 44:21

Along those lines, and you said a minute ago, you get the reaction of being from Iowa, the blues artist from Iowa. So there's famously Chicago blues, Kansas City Blues, East Texas blues. What's Iowa blues?

SPEAKER_10 44:31

For me, it's it's the conveyance of emotion. All of those folks have showed us that different chord forms don't make a difference. Different rhythms don't make a difference. It's still blues. What's missing a lot of times, and what makes their blues the folks that did it and made it special is that emotional component. You know?

SPEAKER_03 44:53

Um the people you feel a little creative freedom to be an Iowa blues, so you don't feel obligated to play a Chicago sound or uh I can't.

SPEAKER_10 45:01

I didn't grow up in it.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 45:02

You know, but I can be influenced by it. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't grow up in Mississippi. Doesn't mean I can't be influenced by it. Didn't grow up in St. Louis. Doesn't mean that's not an influence. And so I've got 360 degrees of influence. And I didn't have a mentor in this that said, this is how it goes.

SPEAKER_04 45:25

Yeah. Did you have influence? Like who were your honestly?

SPEAKER_10 45:30

The dude that influenced me the most might be my father-in-law. Okay. Fellow named Tony Brown. Tony's a reggae musician. All right. But he's a reggae musician from Iowa. Watching him be welcomed into uh a folk art that has nothing to do with the state of Iowa. Zero to do. We're as landlocked as anything. This is an island, you know, roots music. And he's incredible. He got to tour with folks like Bernie Spear, Bob Marley, and uh Peter Tosh and Tosh Mahal, all of these folks. Wow. And he's and he's known inside of the music world as being that person that can morph into where it is and what it is. He was a person with a lot more confidence than I had when I was his age.

SPEAKER_04 46:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 46:18

You know, and sometimes confidence can get you into trouble with other folks. Your confidence. You know? And so, as the baby in my family, you watch to learn always. And so you you find out the mistakes that other people say they've made, and you don't allow yourself to make those mistakes. You know, in this business, humility carries some weight. Cockiness also carries some weight. And even when somebody tells you that it's the that's the best that they've ever heard, if you can't repeat it, then you ain't that good. You know? I was a fluke. And so that's the gauge that I've had to carry myself with. I work a job that's never done. Somebody says, man, that's the beat, man, that's the best I've ever heard that song sung. I have to, the next time they're in the room, if I do that song, I have to do it better. Somehow. I don't know what it is, but I have to figure out a way to make them feel it differently. To hit a note that I didn't hit just right. But I have to be conscious of it. Has nothing to do with anybody else. Has everything to do with the standard that I set for me.

SPEAKER_04 47:44

I've got one more question with respect to um venues. So I remember like like Ray, I think I probably ran across you, Kevin. Sometime early 90s. I feel like I feel like maybe you performed at the yacht club a time or two. Is that true? Once or twice. The blues instigators? Once or twice. At the yacht club. So I remember the yacht club, I remember the mill. You know, like what's going on? What do we need to do in Iowa City to like like where do you play now? It feels like with the death of the mill, and the yacht club's kind of pivoted a little bit. What do we need to do to get a good music venue scene going back in Iowa City? Or where where do you like to play and what do you miss?

SPEAKER_10 48:25

Honestly, what I do here is community-based. I do the summer of the arts stuff. Yeah, downtown on the pet. I do the if people reach out to me and want me to play fundraisers, I try and make time for those things locally. Yep. Playing the venues, most of the venues are what I call this is no knock on the venues because they're they're trying to stay afloat.

SPEAKER_09 48:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_10 48:50

I call them warm body venues. We don't do this for the money. We just do it because it's you know. The reason that mom and pop stores get mad at Walmart is because they didn't make themselves into Walmart. But every mom and pop store that started up should have had aspirations of becoming Walmart. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with making money doing what you you intended to do. My resume is not conducive to walking in and having to argue about what it should cost for me to perform here. Okay. Yeah. Well, so-and-so plays if uh I'm not them. They don't exist without me. They they you you have them list out their local influences.

SPEAKER_06 49:48

Right.

SPEAKER_10 49:48

You know, who they saw do this that made them think they could. You know? Somehow, some way, we have to realize that sometimes antiques cost more than that brand new shit. Yeah. Amen. Well say. Amen.

SPEAKER_04 50:04

Amen. Amen. We're all collectors here, man. We're we we're all vintage guys.

SPEAKER_10 50:09

Sometimes an antique has a little more value than that new shiny thing. And I might not be much to look at, but I'm gonna make sure that you don't forget what you heard.

SPEAKER_03 50:20

Right. He used that silence before he said that, Brad. It takes you there emotionally.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

Absolutely. I was all in.

SPEAKER_04 50:27

I was all in.

SPEAKER_05 50:29

So, Kevin, we've only got a couple more minutes with you here. I want to talk about your last album. Thank you, brother Bill. Yeah, man. And I also want to talk about what you got coming. So you have uh your vocal range is very similar to Bill Withers. I mean, you you were right there with him. Tell us about your last album, what you got coming up.

SPEAKER_10 50:49

So, one of one of the fun facts that a lot of folks don't know about me, I actually made a pilgrimage to LA to meet Mr. Withers before he passed away a long time ago. This early early issue in my career. And people filmed it as a documentary. And so I have I've been sitting on this documentary of me and Mr. Withers hanging out. But inside of the time that I was raising the money to go see Mr. Withers, I also did shows with Coco Taylor and B.B. King, and these documentary film guys got me opportunities to interview them too. Awesome. And so I've got this documentary of Kevin Burt doing, you know, hanging out with these legends. That's amazing. Yeah. And uh it's a masterclass for me. I sit and look at it every few weeks to remind myself of what I made a commitment to carry on. You know, and it matters to me because Coco Taylor's like the coolest grandmother that anybody could ever want. B.B. King is B.B. King. Right. And then Bill Withers is a cool personifier. A soul that there's no punches pull, there's no dishonesty, there's nothing more raw than somebody who's willing to tell you everything. Right. And the lessons I learned from Mr. Willows in that two-hour conversation that was supposed to be 20 minutes. Um I just wanted to tell him thank you to his face. Yeah. I did. And so when he passed away, like after after I met him, every 34th Blue Moon, I'd get an email. Hey Big K, have you still at it? Yes, sir. And that was the exchange. But that was enough to keep me moving forward. Keep trying, keep pushing. When he passed, I told him before, I told him in the in our conversation that someday I was gonna do a tribute to him. And he said, be careful, I want you to, because number one, it makes me money. Somebody else records my music, I get paid. Right. But number two, it means that what I had to say still has relevance. Right. And a whole nother generation is going to have to hear the words that I tried to get them to hear.

SPEAKER_05 53:17

Right.

SPEAKER_10 53:18

A generation or two before. Right. And so the album is not me trying to do a tribute, you know, like a create a tribute band to Bill Withers. It is a moment of my. He said, This was the last bit of advice that he gave me. He said, I want you to do it, but I want you to, I don't want you to do it like I did it. I want you to do it like you do it. Just do it good. And so none of the songs are done so that I'm telling the story as if I was Bill Withers trying to tell the story. All of them are, there's a why for every one of the songs on the album, personally. Whether it's advice that I couldn't get from my father, uh, whether it is an eye-opening moment about understanding emotions, whether it's a social commentary, but there was a lesson I learned from this song. And each one of them has a personal why. So it's my tribute to Bill Withers. And the last song on it is a song I wrote called Thank You, Brother Bill. And I literally sat in the studio and I put together this song that by the time I figured out what songs I was gonna put into the album, I made reference to each of the songs. Not necessarily in name, but in spirit, in the verses that I put together for thank you, brother Bill. You know, when I lost my grandma's hands, I leaned on you. I guess I always will. Guess what I'm trying to say is thank you, brother Bill. Stuff like that. You know? And when my woman took my sunshine, you said the world would keep going round and round still. So I really need to tell you, thank you, brother Bill. You know, without him, I wouldn't have that insight. You know, and so for me, it was a personal journey. Very worth it, you know. Uh the new album that I'm doing is the first time that I'm gonna be put out into the world internationally solo. And so um I did a song that I wrote for my daughters, but I wrote the song for them when they were 18 months and four. And now they're 23 and 27, right? And they both sing like angels. And so I had them, I asked them if they would join me in the studio. And so there's a song I wrote called Your Smile. But behind their backs, I wrote the next chapter that's called, and the song, it's a song called Daddy Smiling Too. And it is both of the songs are from a dad's perspective kind of thing. But it's the it makes reference to some points inside of their development that through conversation I found out were special moments for them. Yeah. Either positive or negative. But, you know, somehow we still made it through.

SPEAKER_05 56:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 56:26

Now daddy's smiling too.

SPEAKER_05 56:28

Kevin, I tell you what, man, uh I used to listen to your radio show you had. And at nine o'clock. 830. 830. You would play the song. Your smile. And then you'd tell your dad it's time to go to bed. Yeah. And they would go to bed, man. It was important to me too. That was a great song.

SPEAKER_10 56:48

You know, that uh I I did that for every show that I did. The the hundred and seventy episodes of my show, all at 8:30, had the song Your Smile. Every last one of them.

SPEAKER_05 57:04

Kevin, thanks for coming on today, man.

SPEAKER_10 57:06

It's been magical to have you, man.

SPEAKER_05 57:08

Super.

SPEAKER_10 57:09

My pleasure, my honor. Um, the new album is going to be called This Trip, and it'll be coming out in August. And my goal with it is to uh I'm trying to reach the debut slot of number one on the Billboard Blues charts. Let's go. And uh uh I'm currently next month in May, May 7th, as a matter of fact, I'm headed to Memphis. I've been nominated for Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year. It's my third time being nominated, fourth time being nominated. Um the previous three times I've lost to Kevin Mo, which is all right. That's gonna say the cool thing for me is everybody on that list I've been a fan of for more than 10 years. And so all of them had to, the first time I was on it, they had to look at it and go, who the hell is Kevin Burke? Right. Because I knew all of them, but none of them knew me. Right. And now I keep showing up. And so uh I got to meet Mr. Moore at the last Blues Music Awards, and I wanted to dislike him, but he's so nice. Yeah, he's a good dude. He's a remarkable person, man. And so, yeah, I mean, I you know, you you put it in your mind how we competitors, you know. I'm an old sports, old athlete, you know, you don't like your people you play against. But man, I would I would take a bullet for him, man. He's a good dude. Yeah. Kingfish, uh Eric Gales was a part of that. Uh Rihanna Giddens, who is up for Acoustic Blues Artists of the Year, and that's probably who I'm gonna lose to, but that's cool. She's a couple grandmother.

SPEAKER_05 58:37

She does banjo work. She's she's amazing.

SPEAKER_10 58:41

So I like to say it, man. I'm consistently on a list of five that folks think is one of the best in the world right now. That's fantastic. And I'll I'll I'll take that. That's a W.

SPEAKER_03 58:50

That's bad. Well, you wanted to close us out with something really quick. I know we're up against time. You got one final send-off for us.

SPEAKER_10 58:56

Well, let's we'll do one of mine, man. This is a song called Real Love. All right. All right, it's an older one, but it's a good one. For you guys, man, to be able to get together as friends and just talk about the world, talk about the stuff around you. You know, to me, that's the thing that that this song and and the stuff is all about. It's that real love. It's uh if you didn't care, you wouldn't talk about it. And so, you know, this song, I was listening to a bunch of Santana when I wrote this. And I I'm not Santana. That's the one thing I know. You keep asking for me. Open for the when you open up your eyes so you can see. You never need open up your eyes. When nobody else but you're gonna think, I'm gonna walk the bulletin. We spend a long, long time let them love, let me find one another. But there are questions we both know we need to ask ourselves. But either one of us shouldn't go on any further. Are we dreaming about a future? Still living in the past. Baby is another question, mother, but we are gonna ask another I'm so bad. When you finger the chance, we'll be in this baby. Don't look no somebody, you're gonna be able to look no another asset, but somebody's gonna be a lot of people.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:19

Thank you, Kevin.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:20

Kevin, thanks so much for being with us, man. Thanks so much for you for the community. Thanks for being an awesome person. Please give my best Mrs. Nicole for letting you stay a little bit longer. I know you guys had plans today. We'll we'll get there, man. If you want to buy Kevin's music or see where he's gonna be, it's kevinbertmusic.net that has all of his scheduling on it. There's music that you can purchase from him. Uh, please, in May, tune in, buy his music. Let's get him to the top of the charts.

SPEAKER_10 1:04:49

Hey, man, I was gonna say, man, I want to encourage everybody, make sure you do everything you can to enjoy the buffet, man. I mean, there's so much everybody that's out there trying to do what they can to create opportunities for people to have something to do. You know, get out. Make a decision. Let don't let your couch win all the time, man. And uh, you know, enjoy the buffet. There's a lot of good music out there. It's not just about me, it's about everybody. This it nobody's trying to do this because they don't want to do something that makes a difference. And so give them an opportunity. All right? So you're here. Big love, everybody. Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate it. Thanks, Kevin.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:28

Amazing.